The present invention generally relates to communications between a portable device and a base device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and system for providing storage and display of transactional messages using message codes communicated from a portable device to a base device.
With the continuing demand for using information to provide enhanced consumer experience, base devices and portable devices may be leveraged to provide a personalized experience for a consumer during a purchase transaction at a merchant. For example, a loyalty program may be provided where consumers are awarded incentives for shopping at certain merchants that participate in the loyalty program. As part of the loyalty program merchants can use portable devices, such as smartcards, and/or base devices, such as point-of-sale (POS) devices, to keep track of the activities of various consumers and accordingly offer targeted advertising and sale offers to such consumers. As a result, the use of a loyalty program is a powerful tool that may increase consumer loyalty by giving consumers added incentive to continue shopping at merchants participating in the loyalty program.
The effectiveness of the loyalty program may be affected by the ability to communicate with the consumer during the transaction. Thus, in order to more fully increase the effectiveness of the loyalty program, information relating to a consumer's participation in the loyalty program needs to be communicated to the consumer in a fast and efficient manner, preferably, at the point-of-sale. Typically, such information is conveyed to a consumer in the form of messages displayed via a base device. Since the duration of a point-of-sale transaction is relatively short and a consumer typically does not want to wait for a message about a loyalty transaction for an extended period of time, messages intended for the consumer involved in a loyalty transaction need to be rapidly created and provided to the consumer. The longer it takes to create a message, the greater the chances that the consumer may want to skip or discontinue participating in a loyalty program due to the wait time.
Some solutions have been proposed to create messages for display to consumers participating in loyalty programs in an expedited manner. Typical solutions involve, for example, providing consumers with generic messages that were set by software or other mechanisms. These generic messages are generally fixed/predefined and cannot be varied. Also, the messages are not directly linked to the activities of a specific consumer. Consequently, these messages are not very effective because they are not personalized for the consumer and thus are not particularly informative with respect to the consumer's specific status in the loyalty program. Additionally, if messages are composed using various databases residing on different servers distributed throughout the Internet, the time to compose messages increases, which further decreases the value of providing messages to consumers.
Furthermore, if messages are provided at all, the messages are typically derived from content stored in the base device because storage space and data access may be limited on the smartcard or portable device. Accordingly, existing messaging methods are relatively inflexible and do not fully use the advantages of providing a loyalty program.
Hence, it would be desirable to provide a system that is capable of providing messages to a consumer in an efficient and expedited manner during a purchase transaction, thereby allowing loyalty transaction information to be displayed at the point-of-sale.